NY's famed Tavern on the Green in bankruptcy

By Chelsea Emery

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Tavern on the Green LLC, operator of the storied restaurant in New York City's Central Park, has filed for bankruptcy protection, a few months before the restaurant is due to change hands and maybe its name.

Chief Executive Officer Jennifer Oz LeRoy said in a statement on Thursday that the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing had resulted from the recession and the city's decision not to renew the lease.

Chapter 11 will allow the company to shed some debt while reorganizing.

Tavern on the Green, which opened on October 20, 1934, is expected to operate through December. Dean Poll, who won the license for the location in August, is then due to take over. He has proposed a $25 million renovation.

Poll operates the Boathouse restaurant in Central Park.

The LeRoy family owns the name "Tavern on the Green" and can sell it or keep it, according to Shelley Clark, the restaurant's spokeswoman. She said it was not known what they would do.

Tucked just inside the park off Central Park West, the restaurant is in a Victorian Gothic building erected in 1870 to be a sheepfold. It housed 200 South Down sheep that grazed across the road in Central Park's Sheep Meadow.

Tavern on the Green, one of the few Manhattan restaurants with a parking lot, can seat 1,500 people in six dining rooms, which made it ideal for parties and receptions.

Restaurateur Warner LeRoy owned Tavern on the Green from the 1970s until his death in 2001, when his family took over. He also owned the famed Russian Tea Room near Carnegie Hall.

The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, which awarded Poll the Tavern on the Green license, said he had submitted the best proposal on the basis of "solid financial backing" and a substantial capital investment.

SLICE OF NEW YORK'S HISTORY

"To thousands of visitors, Tavern on the Green is New York," a 2005 New York Times restaurant review stated. It was also considered one of the most romantic spots in town to become engaged, have a wedding reception or spend an anniversary.

It was fated to be a restaurant by New York City's Parks Commissioner who thought it should compete with the Central Park Casino, known as "Jimmy Walker's Versailles" for the flamboyant mayor.

The sheep were banished to Brooklyn's Prospect Park, according to Tavern on the Green's website, and their shepherd was sent to work at the lion house at the Central Park Zoo.

Works Progress Administration (WPA) workers converted the building.